Random Book I’m Reading Now

Archives

Email Subscription

Thoughts from my brain to the web. Unfiltered. Mostly.

Moolala customer service fail: The gory details

Usually, I prefer to use this blog for posting things that are positive, helpful, useful, interesting, beautiful… But now and then I use it to share customer service experiences. Positive ones, ideally. Negative ones when necessary. This is one of those times.

Moolala is a daily deal site. They offer deals from online or local merchants that represent huge savings. I get emails from them every day, and many of them are quite compelling.

On December 5, 2013 I purchased two of these deals–a rainbow loom kit and two loom band storage containers that I intended to give as gifts to my nephews for Hanukkah (which actually started in November, but our family celebration was December 18, so it should have been plenty of time). Here are my purchase confirmations and voucher emails:

I redeemed my vouchers with the vendor, Belleza Jewelry, and patiently waited for my order to arrive. Here are the order confirmations from them:

Fast forward to later in December, I received an email from Belleza which I seem to have deleted (shame on me) saying that they were still working through orders and would likely not ship my order before Christmas. At this point they offered me a 75% off coupon, which I actually just found insulting (which is probably why I deleted the email) and I went to buy my Rainbow Loom kits at Michael’s craft store. I figured once I got the order I’d give them to a friend’s kids who love Rainbow Looming and would make use of them.

Then, on January 8, I got this email from the clearly overwhelmed folks at Belleza:

So now, I know I’m not getting my order AND I need to do something more to get my money back from Moolala. Way too much effort for a couple of Rainbow Loom sets, but money is money and I deserve a refund. I thought, hey, it’s not Moolala’s fault, so I’ll put together a nice helpful email that will make it easy for them to refund my money. Here is that email:

I got, of course, an automated response:

Now, I realize that I am not the only one requesting a refund. I know that service can take time. How much time is a reasonable turnaround? 24 hours? 48? A week?

On January 15, after a week had gone by and I did not get a reply, I sent this email (which also got no reply):

And this tweet, which did get at least a nibble of a reply (thank you, social media team) despite my unfortunate typo:

I also sent follow-up tweets on January 24 and yesterday that did not receive replies (have I mentioned that I have over 1,800 followers? Not that that’s a huge number but it’s not nothing either):

So, yesterday, I sent this email (which as of yet has also not received a reply):

So, now that I’m fairly sure that Moolala does not care about my $33 or my continued patronage, I’m left with no choice but to dispute the charge with my bank. Which is a shame, since I know chargebacks are not good for businesses (having worked many years in the financial services world), it burdens the bank resources unnecessarily, and it could have been resolved with so much less effort.

So, if you are a Moolala subscriber, take heed. Their deals aren’t worth this kind of hassle.

Now, off to request a chargeback from my bank.

————-

Update:

3 days after I posted this, I got the following emails from Moolala. Of course now that this is happening, I have to figure out how to cancel my disputes (once I verify that the refunds happened). I figured it was only fair to share the reply I ultimately received. Whether the response triggered by emails, tweets, or the tweet of this blog post–or if I simply finally got to the front of the line–I’ll never know.

————-

Update 2/4

And…a reply to the tweet from January 15 came through TODAY. A little late, guys…